Between Carnaval madness and football frenzy I don't know which of the two Brazilian passions is crazier.. in typically Brazilian fashion, of course, the fans had to mix samba into the cheering. The beat is in everything these people do.. I LOVE IT!

Two local teams were playing, Botafogo and Fluminense. We were supporting Fluminense which has a funny custom before every match; they throw white powder into the air. I heard to equally wierd stories for the origin of this custom. The first says that one of their famous players was also a barber and barbers at that time used powder to finish shaving a customer; plausible. The second story claims that back in the old days football was for whites only and Fluminense was the first to introduce black players (and hence making the game more popular and less elitist) but had the black players put white powder on them to circumvent the "no black players" rule. I thought this second one was less likely but more interesting. Botafogo won (1-0).